


The Blue Dunes

by dark_roast



Series: Extra Credit [5]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-08
Updated: 2009-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS through the end of Season Two (AU)<br/>Rated R for Logan swearing a lot, as usual.</p><p>Takes place during the summer after Season Two, interspersed with pre-series flashbacks. After his father's funeral, Logan finds life at The Neptune Grand intolerable, so he packs the Xterra and takes off. But outrunning his ghosts isn't easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blue Dunes

_**August, 2004**_

_Caitlin spends most of the weekend lying on the sand, wearing her brand-new pink string bikini. Logan spends most of the weekend too drunk to fuck her. He's still hammered by Sunday night, so she takes away his car keys._

_She expects a fight, but Logan dismisses her with a princely wave of his hand, pours himself into the passenger seat, and passes out. She drives the Xterra back to Neptune. She's used to her Miata, and piloting Logan's ginormous truck makes her nervous during the twenty minutes before traffic slows to a crawl and then stops dead. No matter how far she twists the radio knob, there's nothing but static and Ranchera music and a distant crackly voice intoning these are The End Times, and Saint John's Revelation has come true at last. She's been staring at the back of the same silver Altima for so long, Logan’s angry wigger CDs are actually starting to look decent._

_Logan already woke up once and snarled at her to pull over, fumbling his door open and puking in the scrub and gravel at the side of the highway. He kept on puking until Caitlin wondered if his internal organs were going pour onto the gritty asphalt, washed away on a tsunami of Scotch and nachos. Instead, he slammed the door, and fell right back to sleep._

_This is Caitlin's rich, famous, handsome, witty boyfriend._

_This is the boy who never hears no. With his warm breath floating where Caitlin shoulder meets her neck, the only possible answer is yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes._

_Nothing but the seat belt keeps Logan from sliding into the foot-well. She thinks about opening the passenger-side door, popping his seat belt, and pushing him out. He's so intent on killing himself, she'd be doing him a favor by speeding things up._

_His hand rests on his thigh, palm upward and fingers curled. His head is wedged awkwardly against the edge of the door. In the glow of the dashboard lights, she doesn't see his sneering grin or the hard, malicious glitter in his brown eyes. He looks pale and exhausted, as if he's run so hard and so far, he's run himself empty and finally, he has fallen down._

_She reaches over and touches his cheek. Logan doesn't stir. She slips her hand into his. Keeps it there even after traffic starts moving._

_A little while later, Logan's fingers tighten around hers. "Caitlin?" he murmurs._

_She glances over. He's squinting at her, flushed and sleepy, his hair sticking up in the back._

_"We're about twenty-five miles from Neptune," she tells him._

_"Want me to drive?"_

_"Got it covered. Go back to sleep."_

_He tugs his hand out of hers. "Safety first." Now he sounds like the Logan she knows. "Keep 'em at ten and two."_

__I hate you,_ she thinks._  


***

**August, 2006**

Veronica came back from New York in July, full of stories, full of plans and grand ambitions. Logan's ambition was to spend the rest of his life drinking and playing Dead or Alive Volleyball. Why tempt fate?

But, hearing her talk, he realized he embarrassed her. All his reflected fame, all his father's money, all the doors he could open for her... none of that was any use to Veronica, and neither was he. So, he broke up with her. Maybe she'd put it in Reverse and backed over his pride too many times. Maybe he just wanted to beat her to the punch for once. Either way, he already knew how this went. Fuck and fight and fuck and fight, until Veronica walked out and slammed the door, and Logan showed up at three in the morning and begged her to take him back. Then they fucked again and then they fought again and the merry-go-round went around and around and around, and what the hell was the the point anymore? Either way, he was fucked.

At least she'd hung around long enough to be his date for Dad's funeral. Showing up stag? Lame. So last year. So year before last.

Aaron's funeral had been so much worse than he'd ever imagined. Sweat crawling down his spine under his dress shirt and suit jacket; the black limo squeezing through the crowd of fans crammed outside the cemetery gates. Listening to their muffled shrieks, as camera flashes lit up their handmade signs: GONE TOO SOON!!! and AARON + LYNN 2GETHER 4EVER IN HEAVEN!!!

His father would live for-fucking ever. Aaron Echolls, Hollywood Legend. Alive in our hearts and minds and tee shirts and full-page tributes in _Variety_. Logan would never know who killed his father. Just that it hadn't been him.

He'd been alone for over a month when somebody knocked on his door in the middle of the night. Logan stumbled out of bed, rubbing sleep crust from the corners of his eyes. It could be her. He opened the door, and there stood his father with blood and brains crusted down the side of his crumpled face, smiling, asking where the ice machine was.

Logan woke up tangled in sweat-clammy sheets. Only a dream, only a stupid nightmare, but he wanted his mother. Even that careless wish -- _Come back oh, please come back._ \-- even the thought of her gliding into his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed, and laying her cool hand on his forehead -- he couldn't bear it.

He ditched the paparazzi at the outskirts of San Diego, pointing his Xterra east into an emptiness of sand and wind-sculpted rock. He followed the highway. He didn't have a destination other than _away_. And driving was faster than running.

When sunset caught him, Logan drove through deepening blue twilight into Williams, Arizona. Luxury accommodations weren't available, to judge by the neon signs winking alight along both sides of the main drag. Just as well. The thought of spending another night in his five-star suite made Logan's skin crawl.

A gigantic golden-orange crown glowed above one of the motels, advertising The Grand Motel and Logan was slowing down, pulling into the driveway before he realized what he was doing. He didn't miss the Neptune Grand. Not exactly. But, he'd called it home for a long time.

His room at The Grand Motel was neat and quiet, and that was all he cared about. Television. Night stand. Queen-size bed. He tossed his backpack on the ugly flowered bedspread.

A single painting was bolted to the wall opposite the bed: Indian pottery arranged in an artful jumble on a rumpled, striped blanket. He liked it. It represented something. He didn't need to tilt his head and wonder if somebody had accidentally hung it upside down.

Lynn Echolls had paid seventeen thousand dollars for the painting in the front hall of the old house, bargaining the dealer down from twenty. (She told the story at every cocktail party.) _Industrial Construction III_ was a six foot by ten foot nightmare of red and black swirls and slashes, like something out of _Hellraiser_. Logan was old enough not to burst into tears when the gallery crew first uncrated the canvas, but he averted his eyes every time he walked past it. _Industrial Construction III_ burned to ashes in the fire that destroyed the Echolls mansion, and Logan decided that someday he'd buy _Industrial Construction I_ and _Industrial Construction II_, and burn them also. Then he'd give the artist a generous stipend to never paint again.

He was tired from traveling, and almost as soon as he turned off the light in his small, unfamiliar room, he fell asleep. He woke up squinting and disoriented. All the lights were on. His father was sitting at the foot of the bed.

At Aaron's funeral, Logan had stood beside the casket for a long time, studying the waxy mask of his father's face; his father's hands, folded across his black suit. He wanted to be sure his father was dead.

"He looks like he's sleeping," somebody had murmured behind Logan.

"You never used to be such a heavy sleeper," Aaron said. His dark red tie hung unknotted. Two buttons on his white dress shirt were undone. The line of makeup ended at his neck and below it, his skin was slack and bluish. "I've been sitting here..." He checked his watch. "Half a goddamned hour."

He rose to his feet, unbuckling his belt, drawing it through the loops of his pants. Flexing the leather between his hands. A hot tear slid from the corner of Logan's eye, scalding his cheek.

"Where do you think you're running off to?" Aaron said. "You're still my son."  


***

_**May, 2004**_

_Caitlin drops her change in the dish where the fat gold money toad is squatting. Her brother Alex used to tease her that if she didn't bribe the money toad, it would follow her home and hide under her bed. And if she didn't have any money at home..._

_Mrs. Reyes wasn't much better. She used to terrify Caitlin and Alex with stories about La Llorona. She was the Ford's housekeeper for years and years. But, when the police found her daughter Marisol in December, she quit. Caitlin misses her._

_Caitlin walks out of the Asian market, sipping her mango milk tea, digging for her car keys in her bag, and she notices something she missed on the way in: the yellow Xterra parked in front of the Lavanderìa. Her heart jumps against her ribs. Lots of people own Xterras, she tells herself. It's some random truck that happens to be the same obnoxious color as the truck her boyfriend drives._

_She crosses the parking lot anyway, high-heeled sandals crunching on grit and crushed glass. It _is_ Logan's truck. She recognizes the license plate. She starts past the Lavanderìa, toward Crown Liquor, but a flash of orange in the window of the Lavanderìa halts her. Logan sits slumped in one of the molded plastic chairs, long legs stretched out and one sneaker resting on the washing machine across the aisle._

_Caitlin feels like she's caught him doing something private. Maybe it's that he's out of place, or that seeing him here is so unexpected. He hasn't been in school for two days._

_As she steps into the Lavanderìa, another boy looks up from folding a white tee shirt. Caitlin recognizes him from school. He's one of those gang-banger Mexicans that lurk in the parking lot between classes. A PCHer. She ignores him. When she walks up next to Logan, he pulls his leg back so she can move past him. She doesn't move. That's when he looks up. His face is a mixture of surprise and careful neutrality, masking... she has no idea what._

_"How did you find me?" he asks._

_"I saw you through the window."_

_"I mean," he says like he's talking to an idiot, "How did you know I'd be here?"_

_"I didn't. How could I?" Caitlin sips her drink; it’s sweet and milky and slightly gritty. "What are you doing here, anyway?"_

_"Watching the laundry spin. It reminds me of my own futility."_

_She's known Logan since eighth grade, and she knows that sometimes she just has to roll with it. Everything usually comes out all right at the other end of the conversation._

_"You could be futile at home," she says._

_"Our machine is a top-loader."_

_She thinks for a moment. "Put a sneaker in it."_

_Stretching out his hand, he rubs the hem of her pink sundress between his fingers, running his knuckles under the fabric and along her thigh. They've been dating for a month and a half and he can still make her dry-mouthed and dizzy whenever he touches her._

_"What are you doing here, Miss Ford?" he asks. "Coincidence? Fate? Kismet?"_

_He's not as smart as he thinks he is. Dog Beach is only a few blocks west, and Crown Liquor is two doors down. Of course she found him. But, oh. The way he's looking up at her. Smiling like he thinks he's convinced her he's interested in whatever she's about to say._

_"Our housekeeper used to bring us -- her daughter Marisol; and me and Alex -- to the Asian market whenever she had to run an errand, and she was supposed to be working."_

_Mrs. Reyes bribed the three kids with mango milk teas so they wouldn't tattle to Mr. and Mrs. Ford. They never did. Caitlin always wished Mrs. Reyes had more errands to run. Logan's shoulders relax, his brown eyes softening. Watching him realize that their meeting is only a coincidence makes Caitlin ache for him. She holds out her cup. "Do you want some?"_

_"Absolutely."_

_Logan grabs her by the hips, tilting her off balance, and tipping her into his lap. Caitlin catches herself against his shoulder with her free hand. Logan grunts sharply, and she jumps up._

_He laughs, but there's tightness around his eyes. "Didn't really think that through, did I?"_

_"You're hurt."_

_"Ah, I got rag-dolled yesterday morning. That's all."_

_He's telling her a wave dumped him off his surfboard and tumbled him like, well… like clothes in a washing machine, and she's not sure she believes him. She sits down next to him. Crosses her legs and watches him watch her._

_Logan was the one who suggested they start dating after the Valentine's Night beach party. So he must like her. A little. Caitlin wishes she could make him happy. Not happy like he was happy with Lilly; she knows that's impossible. Just happy enough to chase away the shadows and the ghosts. But, she can't even do that. Nothing she does, nothing she is, will make the dark, lost look in Logan's eyes disappear. Not for very long._

_"I missed you at school," she says._

_Logan doesn't reply. They sit in silence, watching the clothes churn rhythmically in the suds. Hello, futility._

_"You gonna give me some or not?" Logan says._

_She turns on him, wide-eyed, and he laughs._

_"Some of _your drink_, Caitlin."_

_She blushes and hands him the cup. He's still smirking as he takes a sip._

_"Oh man," he says. "You're right. This is awesome."_

_He starts to hand the cup back, and she smiles at him. "No. Too many calories. You can have the rest."_  


***

**August, 2006**

Ten thirty at night in the middle of fucking New Mexico, and there was a traffic jam. It almost made Logan nostalgic for California. Almost. Signs along the shoulder informed him: ROAD WORK AHEAD and EXPECT DELAYS and WE ARE WORKING TO IMPROVE YOUR HIGHWAYS! PLEASE BE PATIENT!

Logan, not patient, turned off the highway at the next exit. He found a room at The Blue Dunes Traveler's Rest. There were dunes, all right. He could see them from his window. They were not blue, any more than The Grand Motel had been grand. Beyond the weed-scraggled edge of the the gravel parking lot, beyond the overflowing Dumpster, a grayish yellow sea of sand stretched to a distant factory sprawling on the eastern horizon like the skeleton of a prehistoric beast.

The bedspread and the curtains were shimmery bronze fabric with flocks of green and gold mallards. The base of the bedside lamp was shaped like a mallard. Over the bed hung a painting of a galleon riding stormy seas. Logan frowned at it. Something was missing. Something... duck-shaped.

A memory from years ago surfaced suddenly: sitting on the porch in the Bel Air house, playing Hot Wheels while his mom watered the plants and sang softly off-key along with the radio. _After nine days, I let the horse run free, 'cause the desert had turned to sea. There were plants and birds and rocks and things. There were sand and hills and rings._

Logan toed off his sneakers, dropped his jeans and his tee shirt on the burnt orange shag carpeting. He slid under the stiff, synthetic bedspread and it rustled heavily with a sound like wings. The linens smelled like flowers. Like too many flowers crushed together.

_It's soap,_ he told himself. _It's flower-scented laundry soap._

He clicked off the bedside mallard, and lay with one arm crooked behind his head, not moving so he wouldn't disturb the bedspread ducks again. As his eyes adjusted, the darkness became blue-tinted dimness. Tired as he was, he knew he couldn't sleep. Not on cheap sheets that smelled like an expensive funeral.

It seemed like five minutes later when he was jolted awake. He sat up fast, panic clawing at his chest like a frantic hamster. The room was empty. The duck light was still off. The digital clock on the nightstand glared 4:44 at him. He had no idea why he'd woken up, but he really needed to siphon the python and strangely, that reassured him.

Then he heard it. A faraway shriek. He jumped; the panic-hamster started flailing inside of him again, but as the banshee cry went on and on, Logan realized whatever was making that noise couldn't be human. At last, the sound subsided into ringing silence.

He kicked off the covers, padded into the bathroom, and took a leak without turning on the light. His reflection floated dimly in the mirror. Past his shoulder, the blurry rectangle of the thin-curtained window glowed ghostly in the shadowed room.

As he came back to bed, the distant wailing sounded again. Logan stood listening, his head tilted, gooseflesh prickling his bare skin. The factory shift whistle. Had to be. It was the eeriest, loneliest sound he'd ever heard. He climbed back into bed as it faded away, pulling up the heavy duck-rustling bedspread, snagging his cell phone off the nightstand and squinting at the sudden bright light as he flipped it open.

He called voicemail, and skipped the three messages from Caitlin. She'd called once after Aaron's funeral, again a few days later, then a third time yesterday. He hadn't listened to any of her messages yet. He didn't need to. He knew what she'd say. _Are you all right? Where are you? Talk to me._ He would. He'd call her back. He just needed time. Or space. He had no fucking clue what he needed. He'd know it when he found it. Maybe. No, probably not. What if he'd already found it and thrown it away? How would he know? There ought to be Cliff's Notes. Cheat codes. Something.

Instead, he played the message he'd saved for over a year and a half. The voicemail lady said, "Message received on. Thursday. January. Fifth. Two thousand and. Six. To listen to your mess--" Logan pressed 1 on the keypad. His phone beeped, and the voicemail played.

"Hi baby," said his mother. "It's a little after two on Thursday. I know things have been difficult for you, and I'm sorry. Maybe we can get together after school today, just the two of us? I feel like I never talk to you anymore. I want you know… before we see your principal tomorrow morning... I want you to know I understand. All right? Call me when you get the chance. Love you."

The phone beeped, and Logan hit 2.

"Message saved," said the voicemail lady. "To archive your --"

Logan snapped his phone shut. He lay awake listening, but the shift whistle didn't sound again. After a while, he drifted back to sleep with the phone cupped in his hand.

The next morning, the waitress at the Rattlesnake Diner told him road crews were ripping up I-40 all the way to San Jon, adding, "You sure picked a bad week to travel, honey."

Logan focused on the coffee level rising in his cup as she refilled it.

"Go see the ghost town," she told him.

"The what?"

"Pyrite. It's about five miles north." She shrugged. "Something to do while you're stuck here."

"Pyrite?" Logan repeated.

"Bad luck name for a gold-mining town."

"Guess that explains the ghosts," he said.

The waitress laughed. She was so scrawny, brown and wrinkled, she looked about two thousand years old. A walking, talking Ancient Egyptian queen with a coffee pot and a canary-yellow uniform. But her laugh was fat and infectious.

He drove up to Pyrite in the afternoon. A few other cars were parked along the side of the road near a weather-pitted sign announcing:  


HISTORIC GHOST TOWN: PYRITE, N.M.  
FOUNDED 1872

He recognized the green Corolla with the New York license plate and the "Ithaca is Gorges!" bumper sticker from motel parking lot. He pulled over behind the Corolla and climbed a stony slope to a cluster of crumbling, gutted buildings. Pyrite looked like it had always stood here bleached and dead, surrounded by flat and featureless desert. Logan had a tough time picturing the town living and thriving, the same way some grown-ups looked like they'd never been children.

He walked up the hill through the center of town, passing a couple wearing matching green backpacks and snapping picture after picture of the decaying false front of a three-story building. One house at the crest of the hill had walls constructed entirely out of bottles. Its splintery front door sagged on one hinge, and Logan pushed it open, stepping onto shimmering smudges of green and blue and brown. The glass walls blocked all the noise from outside. Standing in the bubble of held-breath, silence, Logan laid his hands over his ears, and closed his eyes. The sound of air rushed over him like water and for a moment, he was standing on the Coronado Bridge again, gazing down into fathomless black.

_You should have jumped,_ he told himself. Sometimes he was certain he had.

He opened his eyes and let his hands drop to his sides. Footsteps falling hollow on the floorboards, he walked out of the bottle house. The smell of smoke met him on the front steps. His father stood in the dusty street, one hand hidden in the pocket of his dress slacks, the other holding a cigarette. He took a drag on the cigarette and exhaled, furling smoke from his nostrils.

Logan squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, Aaron was gone. The street was empty. Not a hitching post, not a stretching shadow, nothing he might have mistaken for his father.

Logan bolted. Clattered down the porch steps and sprinted down the street, sneakers kicking up plumes of dust. He thumped against his Xterra, leaping back as the truck's hood burned his hands.

"Ow! Fuck! Shit!" He turned his hands over. Both his palms were red.

He should've been back at the motel, paddling around the tiny pool with a lukewarm soda sweating on the concrete lip of the deep end. That sounded like a nice way to waste an afternoon. But, no. He had to go check out the creepy fucking ghost town.

He climbed into the Xterra and rolled the windows down and sat there studying the ass end of the green Corolla. He couldn't drive away. Not yet. His hands were shaking.

That evening he bought six postcards for a dollar in the lobby of The Blue Dunes, and thought about mailing them all to dead people. Dear Mom, Dear Dad, Dear Lilly, Dear Meg, Dear Felix, Dear Beaver...

He went back to his room and sat down at the desk with the wobbly leg, dumping the postcards out of the paper bag. He picked the one with the Sunset Meteor Crater, then looked at his hands again. The burns had faded to pink, and his fingers felt only a little stiff, as if they'd fallen asleep in the sun. He flipped the postcard over, and wrote:  


Dear Caitlin,  
Greetings from the end of the road.  
I can't drive any further. Or is it farther?  
I'm thinking about writing a monograph on motel art.  
Do you think I can get an NEA Grant?  
Weather is great. Wish you were here.  
Logan.
_You really are an asshole,_ he thought.

He put his head down on his folded arms. He could read "Dear Caitlin." His arm hid the rest. He shoved the postcard off the desk.

Somebody knocked at the door. Always when he waited, every time he hesitated, his father made it worse. Logan stood up, and walked to the door, and with his hand on the doorknob, he turned back, hoping to see himself asleep at the desk. The chair was empty. He opened the door.

Caitlin stood in the doorway, wearing jeans and a pink top with ruffly cap sleeves. A white leather overnight bag hung from her shoulder. She threw her arms around Logan's neck. Caught wordless between astonishment and relief so strong it stung like disappointment, Logan lifted his hands to hold her there, holding him. Her dark hair smelled like peaches.

She pulled out of his arms. "I went to the Grand. They told me you'd checked out. Logan, what's going on?"

"What are you doing here?" he managed. "How did you even find me?"

"I hired Mr. Mars."

Logan blinked at her stupidly.

"You always used to head toward the water when things got bad," Caitlin said briskly, "but, the charges on your AmEx -- that's how Mr. Mars found you -- they kept moving east. Once you'd been here for a couple days, I took a chance that you'd stay put."

That was when Logan noticed the the taxi waiting in the parking lot. "You took a _cab_ from Neptune?"

"I flew. The municipal airport's only four miles from here. Logan, what happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just had to get away from it all. Follow my bliss, light the fire in my belly, connect with my inner..."

Caitlin hit him in the chest. Both hands, palms flat, not hard enough to hurt him, but plenty hard enough to thump him against the door frame. Unlike Veronica, Caitlin was nearly as tall as Logan.

"You don't return my calls, Dick has no clue where you are, I'm thinking the Fitzpatricks shot you and dumped your body in the desert -- and this is your explanation? Fuck you."

"I'm the same fuck you had the last time you fucked me," Logan reminded her. "Brace yourself."

He brushed past Caitlin, and headed for the taxi. The driver sat with one elbow propped on the edge of the door, not bothering to hide his curiosity. When Logan pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, the driver held up a hand.

"Dude, it's paid for."

"I cannot believe you think I'd stick you with cab fare," Caitlin said from the doorway.

"Are you staying or not?" the driver called to her.

Caitlin tossed her hands in exasperation, which the cab driver took for a yes. He lifted a hand in return, backed the cab around, and drove out of the parking lot. His tail lights dwindled quickly into the distance.

"You scared me," Caitlin said.

Logan pantomimed a tabloid headline, spreading his hands. "Heir to the Echolls Family Curse Mysteriously Disappears."

"P.S., You're a prick."

"Yeah. I know."

"Come back inside. We're letting bugs in."

Logan trudged back across the parking lot. In his room, three moths circled the bedside lamp, hurling huge shadows across the ceiling. Caitlin closed the door and set her bag on the floor by the corner of the bed. She bent and plucked the Meteor Crater postcard off the carpet.

"Don't read that," Logan said.

"It says Dear Caitlin."

He snatched the postcard out of her fingers, tossing it onto the desk. He pulled her into his arms, pressing his face to the side of her neck. She stiffened.

"Stop," she said.

"Stop telling me to stop." He kissed her underneath her jawbone, moving his mouth down to where the pulse fluttered and jumped in her throat. His hands slid up her back. "I know you don't want me to."

Caitlin pushed away, hard enough that Logan knew she really meant it. He let her go. Not like he had a choice.

She bumped into the desk. It wobbled, and she steadied it with her hands. "I didn't come to New Mexico because I expected you to... to compensate me."

"_Compensate_ you?" Logan had aimed for glib, but he heard instead the brittle sarcasm sugared over his rage and his fear, easily smashed as the crust of a crème brule. "You mean you didn't come all the way to New Mexico to give me one last mercy fuck?" He pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm shocked, Caitlin. How could you _not_ want me to express my eternal gratitude to you? For saving me from myself?"

Instead of answering, she picked up the Meteor Crater postcard off the desk.

"Because I'm a sure thing," Logan added. "Getting Logan Echolls to fuck you is just like a mint on your pillow. Or sanitizing your toilet bowl. Maybe I should start handing out comment cards. Rate your f--"

"I can't drive any further," she read. "Or is it farther?"

He scowled at her. "Which one is it, anyway?"

"It's farther. But that's not what you wrote."

She held the postcard out to him. The edges of the world darkened like an old photograph and his mouth filled with the taste of dirty pennies. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip. He had written _father_.

"Logan," she said. "Please talk to me."

_I can't talk about this,_ he thought. _Not after this afternoon. Not now. Not in the dark._

He flopped down on the bed and then fell backward, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Oh my God, why do we always have to _talk_ about everything? Why can't I just fuck you like I used to?"

The the springs squeaked and the ducks rustled, and Caitlin lay down next to him, curling an arm across his chest. Soft, warm skin and sweet girl-smells and silence. This was the reason he'd dated her after Lilly died. It wasn't the sex. He could've gotten all the snatch he wanted, although most of the time he'd been too drunk to fuck Caitlin anyway. She was like the blackness under the bridge. He'd never told her that. He never would. Much easier to let her keep believing it was the bleached hair and the slutty mini-dresses, than to say, _I miss the way you made it quiet inside my head._  


***

_**February, 2004**_

_Carrie and Shelly convince Caitlin to go to the Valentine's Night party on Dog Beach. The party is the Friday before Valentine's Day, which makes it Friday the thirteenth, and a terrible idea. Caitlin wears jeans and a pink angora cardigan in deference to the fact that it's a beach party. In February._

_The girls walk down the splintery stairs and head across the beach, Shelley tottering along in her high heels. Caitlin hears Logan before she sees him. Over the pumping dance music and the whooping of her drunken peer group, Logan hollers, "Behold! I am the god of thunder and hellfire!"_

_He's up on a stone breakwater, his orange shirt vivid in the firelight, and he's got a traffic cone is balanced on his head like a wizard's hat._

_"Asshole," Madison mutters._

_Logan overbalances and topples backward off the breakwater. Casey and Dick lean over the wall, whooping and laughing, which either means Logan is fine, or he's dead._

_Carrie and Shelly and Madison pull Caitlin into the swirl of the party. A couple of beers later, Caitlin catches sight of Logan again. He's decided White Zombie is the perfect music for slow dancing with Dick. At first, Caitlin thinks Dick is holding Logan upright, because Logan definitely looks like he's having trouble staying vertical. But, no. Logan clasps Dick around the waist with one hand, and then thrusts out his arm and Dick's with the other, and takes a few tango steps across the beach. Beaver is laughing so hard he's wiping both his eyes and his nose._

_Dick shoves Logan off. Logan staggers back, looking wounded, but then appears to forget about the entire thing as he spies Madison, who has come stomping over to retrieve Dick._

_Several Jell-o shots later, Caitlin walks down toward the surf, taking deep breaths and telling herself she isn't going to throw up. All she needs is some fresh air. Away from the glare of the bonfire, the dark is startling. She walks past a white plastic chair lying its side in the sand, past a lifeguard's hut on stilts, and she stumbles over something in the sand, dropping to her hands and knees. The sand is cool and wet and Caitlin is tempted to stretching out for a while. Instead, she stands, brushing the sand off her jeans. She picks up the object that tripped her, a Puma sneaker. She looks around. She's alone._

_Then it occurs to her to look up. Two denim-clad legs dangle off the edge of the roofed platform on top of the lifeguard station. One in a white cotton sock, the other in a Puma sneaker. Ah-hah._

_Caitlin climbs the ladder, holding onto the sneaker. When she's almost to the top, the legs shift and Logan's face appears over the edge of the platform._

_"Hey. Where's Cole?"_

_Caitlin sets the sneaker on the platform. "We broke up."_

_"Dude," Logan says with deeply drunken dismay._

_"Two weeks ago," Caitlin adds._

_"Dude," he repeats._

_"What are you doing up here?" she asks._

_"Watching the waves."_

_He pats the platform beside him. Caitlin hikes herself up the rest of the way, and sits next to him, her hip is pressed to his hip in the small enclosure._

_"Why'd you break up with Cole?" Logan asks._

_"He got pissed because I wouldn't sleep with him."_

_Actually, what Cole said to Caitlin was, _"You think you're too good for me, you uppity bitch?"_ She does think so._

_Logan mulls this over. "Is it just Cole y'don’t want to fuck? Or guys in general?" His face lights up. "Do you like girls?” He doesn't wait for an answer. "What about me? Wouldja fuck me?"_

_Caitlin has no idea how to answer. No is a lie, and yes seems inadvisable._

_"Lilly told me once that you really like me," Logan adds._

_It's true. Caitlin confessed her crush on Logan to Lilly a few weeks after the Echolls family moved to Neptune. Three days later, Lilly and Logan were officially an item._

_"Why would Lilly say that?" Caitlin hedges._

_"How the hell should I know? Why does Lilly say anything?"_

_His mouth tightens suddenly, like a flinch. Caitlin understands Logan is so drunk, that for a moment he forgot Lilly has been dead since October._

_"Why did Lilly ever say anything? Why did she ever do anything? Why did she fucking die? I don't know." Logan scrubs his hands over his face. "Is that my sneaker?"_

_She hands it over. Logan spends a few seconds jamming his left foot into the sneaker and fumbling with the laces before giving up. Caitlin leans forward over his knee to knot the laces for him. Logan threads his fingers through the pale curtain of hair that's fallen across her face._

_"I like you better as a brunette," he says._

_She hasn't been a brunette since middle school. The oh-niner girls... they walk alike, they talk alike, they dress alike, they look alike, they all eat lunch at the same table. Shimmering satellites orbiting Lilly Kane. Logan turns his hand, cups the back of Caitlin's head, and pulls her to him. She doesn't bother fighting. What's the point? He doesn't care for her. Not really. But she wants him so badly. She's wanted him so long._

_Even though he's drunk, he's still an incredible kisser. It isn't fair. Caitlin falls apart almost the first moment he kisses her, his liquor-tasting mouth pressed insistently on hers, his tongue parting her lips. His fingers feather down the side of her neck, making her skin prickle and tingle and burn. She feels the scratchy brush of his stubble on her jaw, as he turns his head. Kisses her earlobe, works his way down... and then he stops. She realizes where his hand is. A few inches north of her breast. Resting on her heart. Her fiercely pounding heart. She expects him to laugh, to say something. It's Logan. He always has to say something. _Lilly was right. Behold, I am the god of thunder and hellfire.__

_He doesn't say a word. Just pushes her onto her back._  


***

**August, 2006**

The shriek of the factory whistle ripped him out of sleep. He bolted upright on the bed, squinting in the brightly-lit motel room, expecting Aaron to be waiting for him. But his father wasn't here.

"What the hell is that?" Caitlin demanded.

The lights were on because Logan had never turned them off. He'd fallen asleep with Caitlin on the duck bedspread with all of his clothes on -- with all of _her_ clothes on. He hadn't even tried getting his hand under her shirt. Jesus Christ, he was pathetic.

"It's the shift whistle," he told her. "For the factory. There's two more."

Caitlin, rumpled and pink-cheeked with sleep, rubbed her face. "What time is it?"

"Quarter to five."

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. "Come on. You're buying me breakfast."

"Nothing's open."

"The factory's open. There must be a diner open."

Logan was waking up more and more with every passing moment. He didn't want to be awake at quarter of five in the morning. "No. Come back to bed."

Caitlin made that face. The one he hated. That faintly disappointed face.

"I don't mean..." he began, but the second blast of the factory whistle interrupted him. He didn't want to fuck her; okay he _did_, but right now all he wanted was a few more hours of sleep. Anchored by her arm across his chest. Safe in harbor. Watched over by ducks. He gave up, and shoved himself off the bed.

She smiled. "Don't pout. Pancakes and bacon."

Logan sighed and followed her out of the motel room. The parking lot lay dark and quiet under a sky sprinkled with more stars than he'd ever seen. The factory towers stood sharp and black against a horizon faintly touched with the first hint of sunrise. As the shift whistle sounded its third and last time, the factory lights came on, washing the windswept, rumpled blanket of the dunes with indigo, sapphire, cerulean, and every shade of blue in the thesaurus. Caitlin gasped.

"Well, shit..." Logan murmured. _Truth in advertising. Miracles never cease, do they?_

Caitlin reached for him, slipping her fingers into his. Hand in hand, they stood beside Logan's truck and watched until the brightening dawn turned the dunes to pinkish-gold.  


THE END

***


End file.
